


City of the Dead, City of the Damned

by Erinwolf1997



Category: American Idiot (Album), Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown (Album), The Youngblood Chronicles (Music Video)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Youngblood Chronicles, Anarchy, Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, Homelessness, Hospitals, Inspired by Music, Medication, Murder, Punk Rock, demon!patrick, kind of a spinoff though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 6,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2331278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinwolf1997/pseuds/Erinwolf1997
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The glowing ghoulish digital clock on the oven said it was somehow already half past seven. I guess thunderstorms can really change the look of the sky. The sunrise was hidden behind clouds of smoke and darkness. I sighed at the thought of not seeing it today.<br/>Those were the kind of things that kept my mid distracted from the current state of my world: politics, my boyfriend and his "condition", the shaking in my legs and panic in my head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired partially by a few Green Day albums, that's why I tagged them in it, too.

 

 

  The wind howled, throwing itself against the house's rickety windows. A sudden flood of light outside told me that  this rain had progressed into a thunderstorm. A godlike growl followed seconds after, shaking my gut. I took a step further into the kitchen.

        The glowing ghoulish digital clock on the oven said it was somehow already half past seven. I guess thunderstorms can really change the look of the sky. The sunrise was hidden behind clouds of smoke and darkness. I sighed at the thought of not seeing it today. Those were the kind of things that kept my mid distracted from the current state of my world: politics, my boyfriend and his "condition", the shaking in my legs and panic in my head.

  
        I popped open the microwave just to get a new light and some perspective. The skyline outside had a dim band of lighter gray near the horizon. Maybe morning actually would come.  
        I inspected the inside of the microwave, not necessarily looking for anything in particular. It held a sort of comfort and promise that today was a new day. I would make breakfast in this contraption and then wait until the next day to use it.

  
        I heard another crash in the sky and flinched. The light inside the microwave had gone out and so had the lights on all the kitchen appliances. The power had gone out. In the 21st century this certainly seemed like much more of a problem than it actually was. I decided to give it a few seconds; my thoughts were racing again. With the lack of light I couldn't tell what was a counter and what could potentially harm me.

 

        I waited a minute or two but the power wasn't restored. The room just looked like a mass of different shades of gray. I figured there was no use of staying in the kitchen any longer; it had lost its purpose.

  
        I scuffed my feet down the hall and slipped back into my bedroom. Typical bouts of unease and anxiety had woken me up and forbid me to go back asleep. I felt too many butterflies moshing in my chest and not a single drop of drowsiness I'd felt while sleeping.

  
        The rain fell heavy on the roof and I could hear it faintly. Crawling into bed, he noticed me come in and pulled me into him. His heart was beating in his chest and I could feel it faintly.

  
        "Why are you up?" His face was buried in the pillow. My feet were cold from lingering on the kitchen tile.

  
        "I was worried."

  
        "It's fine."

  
        I sighed. This meager reassurance made me feel secure for some reason.

  
        "What time is it?"

  
        "I don't know. The power went out. Can't you hear the thunder?"

  
        "Oh. Hm." He sounded more alert now.

  
        I laid in bed, feeling the mattress give beneath my weight and hearing him breathe softly. A flash of lightning sent a bizarre visual shock through the room.

  
        "Wow. I see." He said, hushed. I thought I heard sirens in the distance, but maybe it was the wind. Great.

  
        "Can you get up and really prove to me that everything's okay? Please, Patrick?"

  
        "Yeah, I'm wide awake now."

  
        He sat up. The mattress squeaked and I bounced. My phone was sitting on the nightstand, interrupted from its nightly charge by the power outage. He picked up his and cooed to me.

  
        "I'm gonna show you everything is alright. It was just a shutdown. That's happened before."

  
        His fingers  flicked on the screen. The backlight cast shadows on his face and on the wall behind us. He made a disapproving noise.

  
        "I told you. It's not okay." I mumbled, sinking back into the bed.

  
        "No, it's-It's still...fine." I wasn't convinced.

  
        My phone started ringing - audibly - and I rushed over to silence it.

  
        "Shit! Sorry! It's supposed to be on silent!"

  
        The little tune that the speakers produced could be potentially dangerous. I glanced over at Patrick before I answered it. He'd dropped his phone on his lap and his eyes were fading from that terrifying shade of golden glow.

  
        "Hello?" It was someone I barely knew, let alone cared for them to call me before eight in the morning.

  
        "Did you hear? They-" She was yelling. I put the phone to my chest. The phones lit up again, charge sapping back into them. The power was back, at least. I heard her pathetic and panicked chatterings from the tiny speaker on my phone. I didn't want to hear what she had to say.

  
        I hung up. I pulled Patrick out of bed so we could turn on the news.

  
        "Go take the pills. You had another episode."

  
        "What? Right now?"

  
        "Yeah, from my ringtone!" I almost yelled, storming down the hall.

  
        I flicked on the kitchen light to reveal a warm, comforting room. Patrick reached into a drawer and pulled out a couple tiny dark indigo pills, colored that way to remind us that they dulled away the moments of demonic golden aggression.

  
        It had been like this for months: every time he heard music he lost all control. He didn't remember what he had done until the music had stopped. Only one doctor knew what to prescribe him. He took them every day to dull the episodes. They were now a dull buzz in comparison to the total blackouts he'd been experiencing before.  
        He downed them with a glass of water as I watched from the corner of my eye.

  
        "That's the first one in, what? A week?" He left the room to go check out the news. I followed him; the living room was flickering with the changing images of American Television. I could see fron the tint of red light on Patrick's face that this didn't exactly seem like it was a small deal.

  
        I sat on the couch next to him in a panicked kind of collapse. Sure enough, the TV was more red banners than actual footage. "GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN PROGRESSES: ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT DISCONTINUED."

  
        "But," I whimpered, "I heard a siren earlier this morning."

  
        "I don't know what to tell you." He paused. "I wouldn't trust anyone coming up to us in a police car, though."

  
        I shivered. The TV was still bathed in red. It seemed like nothing else was showing. I took the remote and after a brief protest of shock from Patrick, confirmed this. All the channels were airing the exact same thing. Even the snobby, high-end music channels you had to pay extra for. Trust me, I checked.

  
        I turned off the TV and opened the blinds. At least the storm was beginning to let up.

  
        He came up behind me. "It's okay. This will run its course. In a few days this will be nothing."


	2. Chapter 2

     He was right. Our situation that day really was nothing to begin with. Over the next few days, businesses started shutting down. First, ones we didn't even know about, like the imported cigar shop at the end of an alley downtown. Next, it was the pet stores. I saw a truck being loaded up with rabbits that drove away recklessly down the damp, rained on streets. I would have offered to take one, but I figured because the truck was also full of the cigars taken away the day before, I didn't really want to risk it.

  
        Law enforcement still wasn't back. Crime hadn't gone up, but I presumed that was just because all the criminals thought it was some elaborate trick.

  
        That Saturday at breakfast, the rain had finally cleared but Patrick was tapping out the last few of his little velvety pills. There were only enough to last one more day.

  
        "Let's go down to the pharmacy," I suggested. We both knew that there was a great possibility that it could be closed. Half of the grocery stores in the area had gone down by now. We walked out the front door, anyway.

  
        Driving down the streets of a nearly anarchist nation was like a half-fabricated nightmare. You know some things aren't quite right but you accept it. The streets hadn't been cleaned in a week. Mail delivery was infrequent. I saw a dozen stray dogs in our neighborhood only over the course of two days. Patrick wanted to take every single one of them home, he'd expressed to me. Every time he saw one, he pointed it out. It made me smile but we both knew that wasn't an option.

  
        We slid into a parking spot at the pharmacy. There was another car parked at the end, so maybe someone was inside. There was sand in the streets. We were 100 miles inland.

  
        He sprung ahead of me, eager to find out whether he'd be saved for another month or so, or have to live with the other option. I didn't want to think about would happen to him if he was just allowed to get all willy-nilly-demonic every time I turned on an iPod. He played guitar. He played drums. He sang. Those little purple pills was the first step in a marathon towards doing those things again.

  
        The grass out front was untrimmed.  The glass doors that were usually automatic sliding didn't budge. They were dusty, but unusually so, as if someone had purposefully sped up time to make the building look like it belonged in an old ghost town. We got up close, even touched it, and it did not respond. I rubbed at the glass until I could see through a little window of dustless glass.

  
        "Someone's inside." I said.

  
        "What? Really?"

  
        "Yeah." I backed away from the window so that he could see.

  
        There was a solitary, olive-skinned man sitting in the center of an otherwise vacant and cold pharmacy. He sat in a metal folding chair. He did not move.

  
        "Is he...alive?" Patrick squinted through the window. It felt almost strange to hear him say that.

  
        "Of course he is. I bet he's just guarding from looters."

  
        Patrick banged on the glass. "Are you open?" He yelled through the thick glass that trembled at the crash of his fist.

  
        The man didn't move.

  
        "Please!" He begged. "I need to fill a prescription."

  
        "It's okay," I put my arm around his shoulder supportively. "If we can't get in we can call the doctor."

  
        He let out a sigh. "Please," he breathed into the filthy glass.

  
        "Wait." He was gone.  "Where'd he go?"

  
        Seconds later, he returned, but now we were eager to leave. He waved a shotgun around, probably thinking we were looters and not potential customers.

  
        We quickly backed away from the doors, hopping back into the car.

  
        "Alright. I get it. They're not open."

  
        The sound of the tires squealing against the asphalt was the only noise on the whole block.


	3. Chapter 3

        We returned home and Patrick whipped out the bottle of pills.

        "Here," he called to me. "Call this number for me."

  
        I punched the number into the keypad as he read them aloud. There were a few brief seconds of hope as the other end rang. Ultimately, I put the phone down in disappointment.

  
        "I'm sorry." I hugged him. "We'll figure out how to make this work."

  
        _We're sorry, this number has been disconnected_  repeated itself over and over in my head. They better be fucking sorry.

  
        He stared ahead, out the window. "Thanks for trying." There were no more numbers to call. I don't even know if the drug was FDA approved. Maybe it was for the best that we ran out.

  
        "You still have two left, though, that's good. Can you save them for when you need them or-"

  
        "No, it doesn't work like that. You need to give them time."

  
        "Okay. I'll stash up the earplugs."


	4. Chapter 4

     I awoke  _very_  early Thursday morning to cheering and the sound of breaking glass. My heart threatened to escape from my chest, thinking it was a nightmare. It painfully slowed after I realized that no, it was real.

    "What the  _fuck_?" Patrick rolled out of bed quickly.

  
    I sat up, abruptly. "It's a riot." I froze, not knowing what to tell him next. Of course it was a riot. I saw glowing ambient light from outside. I didn't want to pull back the curtain to see exactly how much fire was out there. 

  
    Patrick came crashing back into the room, panting. "Okay. Don't turn any lights on. They'll know we're here. Gather up things we need, in case this gets grisly."

  
    "Oh. Okay." I tried to slow my breathing. He ran back out. I heard the rattle of pills in the other room. Patrick hadn't taken the last of the medication. He was saving it, but I kept telling him that it wouldn't work at all if he just waited forever. The stress he'd put on himself recently made him believe that the single pill would give him his second chance.

  
    I grabbed all I could think of that might help our situation. Of course, food was on my mind but it was also incredibly concerning how blank my mind was when faced with danger. We crashed into each other many times, trembling as the shouting got progressively louder.

  
    We stashed our belongings in the corner of the bedroom.

  
    "Sit in the corner. Hopefully they'll go away."

  
    We were out of light of the digital clock's face. It was some time between one and two am. The rioters gave us no clue what exactly they were rioting about. I shook hard with fright and he held on to me, trying to calm me down.

  
      _As long as there's no music, I think we'll be okay_ , I thought. I convulsed gently against the bumpy paint on the wall as suddenly the room became a fiery effigy. A brick clunked at the foot of the bed. Tiny starlike shards of glass littered the carpet and in the rapidly enclosing firelight, they were breathtaking. The orange stars glowed fiercely and somehow amid it I heard myself scream. Flames licked at the exposed curtains. He pulled me up; I was too awed at the beauty and the horror to realize our imminent danger. He grabbed our things and we exploded onto the street.

  
    There were other fires on the block. The one in front of our bedroom window, however, seemed the biggest. Almost as if they knew we still lived there. He quietly hushed me into the car. I had never longed so much for the protection of the law. Having people running around the street like maniacs with no one stopping them made me feel like we were fighting in a war we had already lost.

  
    "It'll be fine in the morning. Let's just get out of here." I closed my eyes, trying not to look at the random fires distributed throughout our peaceful neighborhood.

  
    Patrick floored it, skidding down the street and swerving out of the way of broken glass, flames, and drunk-out-of-their-mind rioters. How many were there? It seemed like dozens.

  
    The volume to the car radio was always turned down all the way. The silence was suffocating. Our bags rattled around in the back seat.

  
    A half hour of driving later, we pulled onto a dirt road leading into the woods. Our breathing had calmed and it seemed like a safe place to spend the night in our car.


	5. Chapter 5

     We spent three days on that same dirt road. Sometimes we'd drive up it and back, only to return to the same little spot at the end. It was a brief change of scenery.

  
     We didn't see many people at all. Those who we did see, they weren't memorable. They'd be driving along the main road while we were making our regular trips up and down Our Road. No one ever turned down Our Road. Our dusty old BMW was always in the way, right at the end.

  
     As for our house, we didn't want to go back there. We knew one day we'd go back only to find that it had been looted and bashed in. For now, living in the car was fine. We had our stuff. We had enough food. It was okay.


	6. Chapter 6

        The key clicked into place and I heard the ignition. My mind was heavy; it was like smog, like carbon monoxide poisoning us in our sleep. I rolled over in the passenger seat. I groaned in a sort of questioning way. Where were we going? Why were we going now?

  
        "Shh. Go back to sleep."

  
        "No." I sat up. "I want to see the city. I need to-" I yawned, "see what happened to Our City."

  
        He was quiet. His fingers tapped on the steering wheel and he drove us back down the road, for the last time. Gravel stuck to the tires. We were rolling down, back to our life. 

  
        "We need to find a place to stay. A motel. Something." 

  
        We'd turned onto the main road. Our Road was no longer a part of our life and Our City was next on the agenda. 

  
        I set the seat back up, watching the smoky tree shadows flash by the window. There were barely any lights down on Earth, yet the sky was full of stars. All light pollution had died. This uprising had actually caused something nice to happen, for a change. 

  
        We'd been listening to the radio, only the dull, robotic news stations, though. It was smart; it didn't put me in danger as I slept soundly with the window cracked. 

  
        As we drove down narrow urban pathways we saw nothing new. Nothing had changed since the riot. People were looting and destroying everywhere, really. People were boarding up their houses. People were hopping on trains to Canada. People were hopping on planes to Nowhere.

  
        We drove for a while and we reached the heart of the city. Our City was right in front of us, now. The skyscrapers only served as blocks against the sky. They weren't visible in the solid mass of darkness we drove through. 

  
        We parked next to some old hospital downtown. Patrick went to sleep and I hid under the blanket. The windows were dark and void-like; they were staring at me.


	7. Chapter 7

        Someone tapped on my window when it was light enough to see. 

        "Welcome to anarchy." A voice crooned with a slightly sarcastic tone but considering I was sleeping in a car with the whole country seemingly in hibernation, they spoke as if it had some truth.

  
        But I still didn't exactly understand; this wasn't a movie. People didn't say things like that in real life. 

  
        The voice belonged to a slender, rugged looking man with greasy hair. His brown eyes sparkled and if he hadn't just said something so hopeless to me, I would have thought he was some kind of modern-day Jesus.

  
        I blinked at him. He chuckled. Patrick rolled over, his sleepy face dazed and slightly threatened. Some other people came up to the car. I began to feel threatened, too.

  
        "We're not gonna hurt you," said one of the others, a dark-haired girl who looked she could be around my age.

   
        "What?" I groaned, kicking the blanket off of my legs. We were parked in front of a strangely large building; I then remembered it was a hospital. I had been there before, to get a flu shot two years or so ago. Its auburn walls were brilliantly untouched; I would have expected at least a touch of graffiti.

  
    "Come inside. Please."

  
    They looked like they could tell what we were thinking, that we didn't have much interest in associating with them. That big, modern hospital could mean our end and their lunch, for all we knew. Who could tell if we were working with some cannibals? Or murderers? Mad scientists? These thoughts were almost normal now; I only trusted Patrick and I don't think we had talked to anyone else in length in over a week.

  
    He sat up as I was thinking about running off into the woods with him again. The city lost most of its appeal in the people's absence. 

  
    He unlocked the car door. I was unsure what caused his trust in them, but I noted he hadn't even said a word yet this morning. His hair was tousled as he stepped out into the morning.

  
    I kicked the blanket off of my cozy legs. The impact of the temperature difference drilled goose bumps into my skin. I longed for a real bed to make this Monday morning feel like every other Monday in existence: bleak and hopeless.

  
    I stumbled out of the car. My legs ached from the lack of use; we'd spent days cramped up inside our dusty car, just waiting for things to get better. 

  
    We both stood outside and shut the doors in a defiant manner. A breeze rustled nearby trees. Three people stood in front of us; they didn't speak. 

  
    "Okay. We're out of the car. Now what?" I spat; lack of human contact caused me to be bitter. Their faces looked empathetic at the least.

  
    They inspected us. I started to think there was something up, maybe someone had given me a face tattoo overnight. I watched Patrick on the other side of the car. His eyes were squinty which made his eyelashes noticeable. He was not yet awake.

  
    "Just come inside. We promise you can leave whenever you want if you need to," instructed another girl, slender and pixie-like. She wore a bandana around her head that reminded me of the holidays.

  
     I glanced at Patrick in a way that signified we should trust them, for now, at least. I took one step forward and my Converse made a crunchy sound against the parking lot pavement. The group backed up and turned around, not saying another word of encouragement nor comfort.


	8. Chapter 8

    We formed into a line and walked squarely up to the front entrance. The glass windows were broken in a few places and had been barricaded by shabby waiting-room chairs and couches. 

  
    The man turned to face me, still walking. His shoulder-length hair ran down in messy ribbons over his face. "You don't have anywhere to go, don't you?" The eye contact made my chest sink.

  
     It had never occurred to me that we were technically homeless. There was always that image I'd ponder that we'd step foot back in our own house again. These thoughts got dimmer as I woke up each morning in the passenger seat of a car.

  
    I didn't answer but he knew it. Nobody camps out in a hospital parking lot if they have somewhere to go home to.

  
    We stepped foot in the hospital after quickly breaking through a side entrance. All the lights were out and a stream of light filtered in from the aptly placed skylight above us. I expected more of an apocalyptic interior design with blood on the walls and broken glass strewn across the floor. Instead, it looked rather normal beside from the blocked front door. 

  
    "Hospitals aren't usually the first to get hit," the pixie girl was talking about the looting. We turned a dark corner. "But still, some think they can get money from stolen organs after everyone's jumped ship."

  
    "Otherwise the place still has most of what it came with," the other girl spoke. We turned abruptly into a small room. 

  
    The windows were boarded but they at least let in some natural light. There was a couch and a few chairs on one side of the room; they looked like they'd been slept on at least once. A humming noise made my pulse leap in the thought of having electricity. On the other side of the room sat a small refrigerator. The origin of its power was a mystery to me.

  
    "Um. How did-" Patrick started to ask what I was wondering.

  
    The girl with the bandana was fishing something out of a hole in the wall, somewhat of a makeshift closet. She grabbed a couple cans of something from her strategic storage and shoved them at us. Unable to react, I took one, confused.

  
    "Nicholas hooked up some solar cells outside the window." Sure enough, there were wires running out through a crafty break in the glass. 

  
    "Oh. Wow." She'd handed me a Coca-Cola. To an outsider it would seem that we were good friends, but I wasn't sure who Nicholas even was. 

  
    She clarified after seeing our confused faces. "That's Nicholas." She pointed to the hippie-looking guy we'd entered with. Go figure. "That's Fe." She pointed at the other female in the room, who waved. "I'm Cara."

  
    This still didn't explain why they had let us into their cozy little psychiatrist's office in the first place.

  
    Nicholas had sat down and beckoned for us to join him on the couch.

  
    "Welcome to our humble abode. Not to be abrasive on the first meeting, but," he spoke softer, more serious, "...what's the last news you've heard? About our... situation." He looked me square in the face in the way that a kind grandfather might. "You two look a bit out of it, sorry for lack of better words."

  
    "Um...first off... I'm Patrick..." He introduced me as well, "and we've been living out of our car for three days." It sounded like we were at therapy. A woodblock painting of a tree across me on the wall supported this.

  
    I elaborated. Patrick sipped at the soda like he was hungover, in cautious sips while eyeing the group painfully. Golden light shone through the window in strips. "Riots broke out. On our street. Wednesday night or Thursday morning. We packed up and got the fuck out of there, and I don't really know if we should go back." My voice cracked which pained me, A single tear raced quickly down my face as I stared at my knees. It fell and melted into my thigh. 

  
    "Hold on." I assumed Nicholas was instructing me to wait for a second while he did something. When nothing happened I assumed he was trying to keep our hopes up.  

  
     He turned to his bunch. "We've been here...about five days?" Fe nodded to confirm. They hadn't been here that long. I would have guessed longer but the past week or so felt much longer than when I thought about it logically. 

  
    "Any news over the last few days? We haven't listened to the radio or anything." Patrick was slouched over on the couch, distressed from our past few days.

  
    They thought for a few seconds, refrigerator still humming, as much as I convinced myself it might die any second. 

  
    "No." Cara answered without a hint of emotion. It was disappointing and honestly wrecked me in a nervous kind of way. I was holding onto the idea that as soon as we came back to society, America would've gotten ahold of herself.

  
    I sighed, letting the tension loose. At least these people seemed friendly and we were no longer alone. "I just don't know what to do now, if we should go home..." I released the words carelessly.

  
    Nicholas almost seemed to laugh. "You don't have to go anywhere. Why do you think we invited you inside?" I looked up, surprised. It seemed irresponsible that he was suggesting we stay with them. We'd only known each other far less than an hour.

  
    "We'd stay here? In our car?"

  
    "No, inside! We don't bite."

  
    "Oh," I laughed and nearly blushed. 

  
     Patrick lightened up. "Are you sure that would work for you? We don't want to be a burden," he said, hands clasped tightly.

  
    "Get your stuff. We have the whole hospital, you know."

  
    I nudged Patrick and he met my gaze with a brighter smile. Maybe we could wait things out here. He stood up. "Do you want me to help you get everything?" I asked. He declined. We only had so much.

  
    In his absence an apathetic and uncomfortable silence encased us. They felt what we had been through. I wanted to know more about them and their journey.

  
    "What's your story?" The words spilled out.

  
    "We're musicians." Fe stated. I twitched, thinking maybe this wasn't a great idea. I'd have to tell them about Patrick before they decided to start a world tour or something up here in Hospitalville. Fe continued. "We lived in the same apartment complex. When the police system shut down, some people broke into my apartment. I couldn't have stayed. Too dangerous. I knew them from around, so here we are." 

  
    She seemed to be leaving out major details. How'd they find this place?

  
    "We live like seven blocks north. At 1AM, people were screaming and doing crazy shit out in the streets. We ended up here. No heartfelt story. I wasn't born in this hospital or anything. This wasn't where some famous punk-rocker died. We just broke in." Cara clarified.

  
    "I worked with solar power. That's how I set up the refrigerator." Nicholas added.

  
    "Illustrator." Fe.

  
    "7/11." Cara again. 

  
    "Freelance writer." I added to the list, furthering our combined creative abilities.

  
    Nicholas got off the couch to grab something from the wall-hole. He handed me a sleeve of saltines. I hadn't eaten yet this morning and it was just starting to catch up to me. "Is that your boyfriend? Patrick?" 

  
    "Oh. Yeah."

  
    "What about him? What does he do?"

  
    "Oh, uh," I dropped his vivid past as a musician off the mental cliff. I didn't want things to get too complicated. 

  
    "Accounting."

  
    They cooed in a sort of pitiful, sarcastic appreciation. It was a horrible fake job to assign Patrick. I felt bad. I should have said ninja. In this setting, though, I don't think it would have been appreciated.

  
    Patrick walked back in the door from the lightless hallway. "There you are. How do you guys navigate this place? Everything's the same."

  
    He carried behind him our floppy duffel bag full of whatever we put in there. Clothes? Books? The only thing I remembered for sure was his medication.

  
    "So, you're in accounting? How's that?" Fe asked the questions I'd hoped she didn't. Patrick looked at me funny, and wordlessly I told him to go with it.

  
    "Great. You know, until this happened." I couldn't tell what was acting anymore.

  
    He tossed me the duffel bag. It weighed nearly nothing. I peeked inside the zipper. There was a t-shirt. An orange pill bottle with one dark pill lest. That was it. We were wonderfully prepared for what probably was as close to the apocalypse we were ever going to get.

  
    He sat next to me, pulling me in and whispering as Cara and Fe discussed former accountant boyfriends. "How'd you get me into this?"

  
    I sweated, grabbing the group's attention again. "So, Patrick. They're a band. What instruments do you guys play?"

  
    "Not technically a band, yet. Maybe when this is over. I play drums," Cara told us.

  
    Fe played bass guitar. Nicholas was a vocalist, and he also played some wildly obscure percussive instrument with a name I'd never be able to remember. 

  
    "We'd only need a guitarist, then we'd be free to go." I lurched inside, remembering the days before what happened to Patrick, when he played his guitar in the living room, the color of a silvery moon. 

  
    Patrick laughed. "Yeah. So close. Too bad. I don't know anyone who fits that description." He was just beating himself up. I suggested Nicholas tell us about his job in the solar industry to distract us.


	9. Chapter 9

     Surprisingly, the solar power industry came with some entertaining stories. We chatted for the rest of the day, somehow, getting lost in the subjects and the memories. The topic of music never came up again, though this burden was burning a hole in my chest. As the shadows crossed the room in the early evening, I noticed an acoustic guitar case in the corner behind me. Cara was diving into an elaborate story about what she was like in high school. I broke the shell, indicating to Nicholas that I needed to talk to him outside the room. He looked concerned, understanding. He seemed like the alpha; I should bring it up with him.

 

    He pulled me out into the hallway as if I was getting in trouble for throwing a paper airplane at a teacher. "What's up?" He was almost concerningly affable.

 

    "Okay, this is kinda a...weird fact."

 

    "Throw it at me."

 

    "So, Patrick has this...condition..." I paused, and swallowed. "It's gonna sound like some sci-fi film and we don't really know what caused it, but he can't really listen to any music...at all."

 

    He looked puzzled.

 

    "Or, he'll, get all... demon-y..."

 

    Nicholas leaned up against the wall.

 

    "This is a real medical condition?"

 

    "Yeah, but it's extremely rare."

 

    He still seemed doubtful. Laughter erupted from the rest of the group.

 

    "He was on medication. That almost fully controlled it, but we couldn't get any more once everything went crazy."

 

    He turned into the shadows so that his eye sockets looked empty and emotional. "Do you think they could have any in the hospital?"

 

    "Special order. We had to get it from Cincinnati."

 

    "What can we do about it?"

 

    Tears flowed again as much as I'd thought I'd turned that tap off long ago. "He-he was a musician. A good one. Really good. He was never an accountant. I made that up because he's really sensitive about it."

 

    "All I can think of is we don't play any music, any music at all, until we figure things out." He looked stumped, but it made me feel a lot better.

 

    "I don't know how he feels about telling everyone. You might just want to find ways around it, rather than bring it up."

 

    He understood. We ducked back inside as if nothing had even happened.


	10. Chapter 10

     Night came slowly after those moments. As soon as all light vanished we went into a minor defense mode. We closed the door to the hall, to my liking. Now there was a barrier there, to guard from the emptiness and shivers.

    I wondered whether something as little as a simple doorknob would keep the dangers out of here -no one had mentioned anyone ever breaking in. Although these thoughts teased the space in the back of my head, the presence of Nicholas, Cara, and Fe comforted me as i heard their breathing throughout the night.

     A glum and chill ambient light flooded through the cracks of the boarded up window. I heard no sirens, no cars, no civilians outside. A light cricket chatter sat, barely audible, in the background.

     We slept cramped on the old therapy couch, my back against his chest. There wasn't nearly enough room; my arms lay, dangling pulled towards the floor.

     Some time between the onset of the crickets and the slow awakening of dawn, I lay, eyes aching and head spinning. Moonlight had mixed with the natural luminescence of the autumn night sky. He breathed rhythmically into me.

     Neck strained against the plywood-y arm of the couch, an unfamiliar ache blossomed deep within me. It spread up to my head and gave me the feeling that we  _might_  be in trouble. It didn't matter that our group had grown from two to five; the lack of authority might as well have meant a lack of God.

     An echo of a song uprooted itself in my memory. I hadn't listened to much music and especially not lately, but this hopelessly intimate moment provoked it. It felt like a penetrating indigo with flashes of bright orange like fire. It immersed itself in the delicate chasm between thinking and actually hearing until I picked up what it actually was: just some Green Day song from a handful of years ago.

     I felt inclined to hum, but knew that wouldn't be the best idea for a few nameable reasons. Someone started snoring lazily on the floor. I shut the melody back in my memory, in some way disappointed that I would not soon be able to hear it for myself.

     It teased me. It was comforting like an ill-fated lullaby. With it in my thoughts, I sank deep into the couch cushions, shut my eyes, and eventually forgot.


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning, the sunshine hit my face in a fiery blindness. I could tell someone was already up as I heard scuffling in the room. A groggy feeling washed over me as I sat up.

"Mornin'!" Cara was over by the refrigerator. She tossed me a plastic bag of something. Granola. Breakfast. Patrick began to stir. I tossed the granola to him. "Eat up."

Fe and Nicholas were faintly snoring away on the ground as I turned the knob that opened the door to the rest of the vacant hospital. I needed to go for a walk.

I slipped out. There were large windows to my left down the hall. The light poured through them, illuminating the green, aesthetically pleasing carpet. I traced the curls and leaves in the pattern as I walked down it, desperate for air and to be away.

I passed many rooms; some were empty and sent a chill down the back of my neck.


End file.
